I’ve got 14 v4 cams mounted outside. Every since I got them last December, I’ve had the Motion Warning (“Hi, you are currently being recorded.”) scheduled to turn on at 9pm and off at 8am, and it had been working great. (At 9pm on the dot each evening most of them would give the warning when it turned on.)
Just before going on vacation, I decided to change the Start Time to “15 min before Sunset”. But around 8pm (sunset was around 7pm) none of them were giving the warning, so I changed them to Always (which works). When I got back from vacation I set them back to “15 min before Sunset - 8:00 AM”, but it’s still not working, even after 9pm. I’m not sure if it’s just getting the sunset time wrong (guess I need to check later at night), or if a bug effectively disables the feature when using sunset/sunrise (or perhaps only with an offset).
Anyone else seeing this issue? If it simply has the sunset time wrong, what does it use to determine my location? I assume it’s based on the address (or at least the zip code) I put in the app. I have some first gen Wyze bulbs set to Sun Match, and it seems that they may be at least a couple of hours behind with matching the sun, as if they’re on Pacific Time or something instead of Eastern Time.
Update on this: The sunset is currently around 6:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time at my location. The time is correct on the cameras. The Motion Warning is still set for “15 min before Sunset - 8:00 AM” on all the outside v4’s. So it should be turning on around 6:22 PM. Last night I checked at 11:01 PM and there were no warnings from any of the cameras. This morning I checked at 6:18 AM and there WERE warnings.
So the feature is working, but the sunset time is somehow horribly off. It must think I’m somewhere on the planet where the sun is setting sometime between around 11:17 PM and 6:33 AM. Or it’s using the wrong time zone for the calculation.
I rarely go to bed after midnight and rarely get up before 7 AM (once a month I get up at 6:05 AM), so it may be hard for me to pinpoint exactly when it’s turning the warning on. I might try removing the 15-minute offset and see if that makes a difference.
What did Support say when you submitted a log and opened a ticket about the issue? The way you’re describing this—it works, sort of, but it’s working within a time window that’s hours off what it should be for your time zone and location—really strikes me as very similar to the issue with Vacation Mode triggering at the wrong times for some devices. I started doing some testing about that a few months ago but then got busy with other stuff and didn’t follow up with Wyze Support and try to get them to have engineering take a look.
A lot of the ways Wyze handles time seem broken (you can find plenty of examples here in the Forum), so what you’re describing doesn’t actually surprise me, and I think it’s something they should add to their list of features to fix.
I haven’t opened a ticket yet, but will this evening or tomorrow. I wanted to check here and on Reddit first to see if it’s a known issue. I’m also going to get a better idea as to how far off the sun match is for my bulbs. (Seems it may be off in the opposite direction, and not by as much.)
Yeah, I’ve opened tickets in the past about Vacation Mode on some devices, but that was before I did some testing a few months ago, and I haven’t tried resurrecting the issue since then. I need to make some time to do that, too.
I just submitted a ticket. And I think I’ve figured out what’s really happening. When I got rid of the offset (changed “!5 minutes before sunset” to “0 minutes before sunset”), it started working correctly.
That got me to thinking that perhaps it’s actually using HOURS instead of MINUTES for the offset. So, 6:37 PM = 18:37, 18:37 - 15 hours = 03:37, 03:37 = 3:37 AM. Thus, the cameras were probably turning the warnings on around 3:37 AM (instead of around 6:22 PM) and off at 8:00 AM.
To test this theory, I set one of the cameras for “12 minutes before sunset - 6:00 AM” Sure enough, I was getting warnings at 9:30 AM. I bet with that setting it’s turning on at about 6:37 AM and turning off at 6:00 AM.
Perhaps someone else can check and see if they get the same results. For example, if sunset for you is about 4 hours away, set your camera’s Motion Warning for “0 min before Sunset - 6:00 AM” and confirm that you don’t get warnings. Then try “2 min before”, then “3 min before”, etc., until you start getting warnings, which will probably be when you set it to 4 or 5 minutes.
I just did this with mine and it stopped giving warnings when I changed it to 8. It’s now 10 AM and sunset is around 6:30 PM, so I expect warnings to start again around 10:30 AM.
Started getting the warnings at 10:34 AM. So it’s confirmed that it’s using hours instead of minutes for the offset. How on earth does a bug like that make it through alpha and beta testing?
I haven’t done extensive testing with this, so I can’t yet verify what you’re reporting (offset being stored/set as “hours” instead of “minutes”), but I have another thought, and I wonder if it’s something you might want to consider: If you’re trying to put 14 different Cam v4s on the same schedule, then why not do it all with a single Schedule Automation instead of separately changing Settings ➜ Detection Settings ➜ Motion Warning for each individual camera?
From the Wyze app Home screen: ➜ Automation ➜ Schedule.
DO
Cam v4 #1
Turn on Motion Warning
Cam v4 #2
Turn on Motion Warning
Cam v4 #3
Turn on Motion Warning
Cam v4 #14
Turn on Motion Warning
WHEN
Start Time 15 min before Sunset
End Time (Optional) 8:00 AM
There are at least a couple of advantages to doing it this way:
You can set the schedule for all the cameras in one place.
You can see a log of when the Schedule Automation runs: On the main Automations tab, tap the icon to the right of “My Automations” that looks like a house with a clock over it.
Note that if you do this you’ll want to remove any Motion Warning schedule from any Cams you include in the Schedule Automation. Set Settings ➜ Detection Settings ➜ Motion Warning ➜ Schedule to Always for those Cams. Ask me how I know.
That’s something I’d consider trying to see if you get better results with the sunset time offset and have only a single schedule to manage. Maybe just try it with one or two Cams before going into each’s Settings to change everything and see how that works out.
Based on what you’ve described so far, I still don’t doubt that there’s a problem with your current schedules operating at the correct times for your location, but trying something like this on a few of your Cams might provide a more immediate solution while you’re waiting for Wyze to fix the real bug.
Excellent suggestion. I considered trying something like this, but hadn’t had a chance to see if it was even possible. Will definitely do since it’ll make it easy to change the schedule for future vacations, etc. I suppose one possible disadvantage is the Motion Warning might not turn on or off if my internet happens to be down (or if Wyze is having server issues) at the moment of a scheduled trigger time. But that should be fairly rare.
Criminals don’t give a about a goofy “You are being recorded” message from a camera. From local news here yesterday, these two idiots just kept on taking stuff even when saw they were being recorded. No they have not been caught (Yet). They are also out of uniform, no hoodie or mask.
That’s a fair point, since the Automations run from Wyze servers, and I agree that it should be a fairly rare occurrence. I think being able to see the log of when things run is a real advantage and, oddly, even some non-“Automation” functions show up in that log: I have three Lamp Socket v2s that are triggered by a Cam v4’s Person detection within that Cam v4’s Settings (not set up within Automations) and I can see in the Automation History when those trigger successfully (which makes me think that this feature of Lamp Socket v2 is actually running from the rules engine and that Wyze needs to complete the build-out for that implementation).
I still think you’re probably right about something within the Motion Warning scheduling feature being buggy, and Wyze should definitely fix that if it is, but hopefully setting up your management within Automations will simplify the way you want to do this, especially with so many cameras at once.
Note that if you do this you’ll want to remove any Motion Warning schedule from any Cams you include in the Schedule Automation. Set Settings ➜ Detection Settings ➜ Motion Warning ➜ Schedule to Always for those Cams. Ask me how I know. 
about a goofy “You are being recorded” message from a camera. From local news here yesterday, these two idiots just kept on taking stuff even when saw they were being recorded. No they have not been caught (Yet). They are also out of uniform, no hoodie or mask.
